Asma Naeem named Director of the Baltimore Museum of Art
January 26, 2023
Alumna of the Department the highest profile UMD graduate at the Baltimore institution
Asma Naeem was named the new director of the Baltimore Museum of Art on Tuesday, January 24th and will assume her new duties at that institution on February 1st. A graduate of the Department, where she received her PhD in 2011, Asma taught a few classes for the Department before her first curatorial position, at the National Portrait Gallery, from 2014 to 2018. In 2018 the Baltimore Museum of Art named her the Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Chief Curator, in which capacity she curated a number of exhibitions, including Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love, which received a great deal of praise.
A champion of justice and equity, whether in the courtroom ( a previous life before graduate school that saw Asma working in the Office of Ethics in the DC Court of Appeals!) or in the classroom and museum, Asma is not afraid to program, or counter-program, to highlight inequities in society. In a profile just this past fall in the Baltimore Banner, Asma related a time at the National Portrait Gallery when, to counter the optics from the hanging of then-President Donald Trump's portrait, she hung opposite it a portrait of the late rapper Tupac Shakur.
As Director, Asma will oversee the installation this March and early April of her most recent exhibition concept, The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, which opens April 5th to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Hip-Hop.
For us in the Department celebrating Asma's success, we recognize also the excellent curatorial team that surrounds her, many of whom are products of our graduate seminars and undergraduate classes. This past fall, the Baltimore Museum of Art named Lara Yeager-Crasselt Curator of European Painting and Sculpture. Lara, who studied with Arthur K. Wheelock at Maryland and was curator of the Leiden Collection for a few years, will be rehanging the BMA's European collection in view of the Museum's revised Mission Statement, a sensitive task to which she is well-suited. Cecilia Wichmann, who is a PhD candidate in the Department, is an active curator in the Contemporary Art department, whose sensitive eye and commitment to excellence and community inclusion results in thoughtful, and thought-provoking, shows. Stay tuned for her next big project! Kevin Tervala, who graduated with a BA from the Department, is Associate Curator of African and Oceanic Art and Department Head of the Arts of the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Pacific Islands, but he also regularly teaches a course on African Art here in College Park.
Maryland is well-represented at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and Director Asma Naeem leads the way! Congratulations!
Baltimore Sun (through MSN)